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Thursday, August 23, 2012

South Korean Police Tire of Abuse by Drinkers

Who knew Korea was a PARADISE for my fellow Bernards?????
South Korean Police Tire of Abuse by Drinkers

http://www.nytimes.com/?adxnnl=1&adx...Sto06dKWdWt1zQ

The authorities face an uphill battle on two points: society’s acceptance of heavy drinking and South Koreans’ general disregard for police authority.
I love these people.

Almost every night in almost every police station lockup in Seoul, drunken men — and sometimes women — can be found abusing officers verbally and even physically, as a widely tolerated way of banishing anger. They usually are allowed to sleep it off and go home, their punishment no more than a small fine.
Finally, a place that has their $#@! figured out.

a country that remembers, resentfully, when the police served as henchmen for Japanese colonial masters and military dictators,
We're just enforcing the rules people. And making you safe. You should love us.
Sincerely, pigs.

“We hesitate to use force against unruly drunken citizens because then we’re likely to face charges of police brutality,” said Cho Tai-il, senior police inspector in the Guro district of Seoul.
It just keeps getting better.

During Japan’s colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, Koreans resented the police for working with the Japanese authorities. After Korea’s liberation, many officers ran the national police force, which formed the front line in suppressing pro-democracy demonstrations.
Sound familiar?

After the country’s democratization in the late 1980s, the relationship between citizens and the police was upended. Fear of officers was replaced with an attitude of “citizens are your boss.”
Koreans are doing it like a boss.

Bernard
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At one point, the man grabbed an officer by the collar and pushed him against a wall. He was released, and police officers expect he will get a small fine.
Somebody get Antonio Buehler on the phone.

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need to read up (webztron) on Korean history, sounds interesting this Japan domination - how long did it last? I thought the Japs were ancient Korean farmers who sailed across the seas for new farmland about 5000 years ago. They hate each other?
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07-25-2012 08:19 AM #5
SushiHorn
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Originally Posted by H34TX
need to read up (webztron) on Korean history, sounds interesting this Japan domination - how long did it last? I thought the Japs were ancient Korean farmers who sailed across the seas for new farmland about 5000 years ago. They hate each other?
A big chunk of Japanese heritage comes from people closely related to modern-day Koreans. Immigration from the peninsula to the Japanese Isles continued into recorded history (around 700 AD or so).

Korea was a Japanese protectorate from 1895 to 1905 and an outright colony for the next 40 years. The background is interesting. Japan began to modernize and industrialize rapidly in 1868 after the Meiji Restoration. At first they tried to work with the Chinese to resist Western encroachment. The Chinese basically blew them off - as they did most non-Chinese. At that point, Japan changed course and decided to build its own colonial empire.

Japan defeated China in 1895. The outcome of the Sino-Japanese war put Korea and Formosa (Taiwan) under Japanese control. But the fruits of victory further north were taken from Japan and handed to Russia by a combined intervention with the implied threat of war. Russia was aided by France and Germany to pressure Japan into withdrawing from the Liaotung Peninusula and Port Arthur (Dalian) - which Russia then took for itself. This set the stage for the Russo-Japanese War. After Japan won that war in 1905, Korea shifted from protectorate status to colony.
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07-25-2012 08:45 AM #6
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I might do well as an illegal there
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07-25-2012 08:49 AM #7
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Originally Posted by H34TX
need to read up (webztron) on Korean history, sounds interesting this Japan domination - how long did it last? I thought the Japs were ancient Korean farmers who sailed across the seas for new farmland about 5000 years ago. They hate each other?
The Japanese colonial period (1905-1945) was pretty brutal for the Koreans. Protesters were shot and collective reprisals were common. It wasn't as bad as it was for people in occupied China, but it was still pretty bad.

Japanese militarism was built, in part, on the concept of Japanese racial superiority. Koreans are pretty closely related to the Japanese from an ethnic standpoint, but they aren't Japanese. So the Japanese treated them kind of akin to how the Germans treated the Dutch and Danish and Norwegians, who they considered fellow Aryans. They still used the Koreans as slave labor and used their women as conscripted prostitutes for their soldiers, but they didn't widely use them for medical experiments or kill them for fun they way they did other untermenschen in places like China and the Philippines.
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07-25-2012 09:56 AM #8
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Koreans drink like fish compared their Asian neighbors. They work late, yet usually show up at 9am for work once the soju haze wears off from the night before. Regarding the Japanese as the history posted above indicates, its a love/hate relationship. The Korean version of a sake bomb, the soju bomb, is called the atomic bomb for a specific reason. Koreans imitate the Japanese in many ways. I've spent one year working for Koreans and there are many things I still don't understand and probably never will partly because Korean is far more complex to learn compared to Japanese and Mandarin - per a German co-worker who speaks both.

I can completely see the Koreans not giving $#@!s about cops. They are a pack of wild animals when they go out to a club or for karaoke as opposed to a more subdued, routine night of casual sake, beer drinking and BBQ.
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07-25-2012 10:08 AM #9
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After the country’s democratization in the late 1980s, the relationship between citizens and the police was upended. Fear of officers was replaced with an attitude of “citizens are your boss.”
The horror.
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07-25-2012 10:36 AM #10
Hammer Hands
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Korea represents the opposite end of the spectrum where the police are concerned, yet there's a catch. In addition to a culture that demands conformity, Korea is very competitive internally (a lot of people on a tiny peninsula). Success is narrowly defined. As a result of all of this, there are folks who make a living as professional snitches - reporting and documenting crimes, regulations violations to the police in exchange for monetary rewards. There was a WSJ article on this topic recently. I'm too lazy to look it up though.
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07-25-2012 12:06 PM #11
SushiHorn
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Originally Posted by Hammer Hands
Koreans drink like fish compared their Asian neighbors. They work late, yet usually show up at 9am for work once the soju haze wears off from the night before. Regarding the Japanese as the history posted above indicates, its a love/hate relationship. The Korean version of a sake bomb, the soju bomb, is called the atomic bomb for a specific reason. Koreans imitate the Japanese in many ways. I've spent one year working for Koreans and there are many things I still don't understand and probably never will partly because Korean is far more complex to learn compared to Japanese and Mandarin - per a German co-worker who speaks both.

I can completely see the Koreans not giving $#@!s about cops. They are a pack of wild animals when they go out to a club or for karaoke as opposed to a more subdued, routine night of casual sake, beer drinking and BBQ.

Complex doesn't fully describe the attitude of Koreans towards the Japanese. The older Koreans generally HATE Japanese people while the younger generation merely dislikes Japan. Yet both groups have sought to emulate Japan in almost every way that matters - yet they can't bring themselves to admit it most of the time.

LL correctly pointed out the racial attitude of the Japanese towards the Koreans in the early 20th century. The downside from Korea's standpoint is that Imperial Japan tried to do a total makeover in the image of the Home Islands. The Empire's policy was to extinguish the Korean language and culture - replacing it with standard Japanese wholesale in both cases.

Korean language instruction was forbidden. Korean cultural arts were banned and their practitioners persecuted or even killed. Modern Tae Kwon Do is basically Shotokan Karate with a few bells and whistles added. But because of this history, most Koreans would never admit this. The Korean industrial conglomerate structure (chaebol) is modeled on its Japanese counterpart (zaibatsu). For example, compare the lines of business between Hyundai and Mitsubishi; or between Samsung or LG and Hitachi or Toshiba.

Koreans are less conformist than Japanese but still much more so than Americans. It is the conformity and willingness to submit to hierarchy that makes the conglomerate structure workable. Both those qualities descend in part from the common Confucian cultural heritage that both nation share with China. American individualism derives from Christian cultural memes that became dominant during the Reformation and Enlighenment Europe.
Last edited by SushiHorn; 07-25-2012 at 12:07 PM.
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07-25-2012 12:25 PM #12
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Originally Posted by SushiHorn
Complex doesn't fully describe the attitude of Koreans towards the Japanese. The older Koreans generally HATE Japanese people while the younger generation merely dislikes Japan. Yet both groups have sought to emulate Japan in almost every way that matters - yet they can't bring themselves to admit it most of the time.
And it's not limited to South Korea, either. People refer to the North Korean regime as "Communist," but it has a lot more in common with Japanese Militarism than it does with any version of Communism practiced by the Soviet Union, China, or any of their satellites. The "Juche Theory"--calling it a "theory" is wildly generous--is largely based on militarism, paternalism, and racial superiority. Whereas the Soviet Union (and to a somewhat lesser extent China) wanted to spread the Revolution, the DPRK has no interest in spreading beyond the Korean Peninsula because, according to their propaganda, only the Korean people are pure enough and good enough to merit the loving benefices of the Great Leader/Dear Leader/Great Successor.
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07-25-2012 01:21 PM #14
Hammer Hands
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Originally Posted by SushiHorn
Complex doesn't fully describe the attitude of Koreans towards the Japanese. The older Koreans generally HATE Japanese people while the younger generation merely dislikes Japan. Yet both groups have sought to emulate Japan in almost every way that matters - yet they can't bring themselves to admit it most of the time.

LL correctly pointed out the racial attitude of the Japanese towards the Koreans in the early 20th century. The downside from Korea's standpoint is that Imperial Japan tried to do a total makeover in the image of the Home Islands. The Empire's policy was to extinguish the Korean language and culture - replacing it with standard Japanese wholesale in both cases.

Korean language instruction was forbidden. Korean cultural arts were banned and their practitioners persecuted or even killed. Modern Tae Kwon Do is basically Shotokan Karate with a few bells and whistles added. But because of this history, most Koreans would never admit this. The Korean industrial conglomerate structure (chaebol) is modeled on its Japanese counterpart (zaibatsu). For example, compare the lines of business between Hyundai and Mitsubishi; or between Samsung or LG and Hitachi or Toshiba.

Koreans are less conformist than Japanese but still much more so than Americans. It is the conformity and willingness to submit to hierarchy that makes the conglomerate structure workable. Both those qualities descend in part from the common Confucian cultural heritage that both nation share with China. American individualism derives from Christian cultural memes that became dominant during the Reformation and Enlighenment Europe.
My understanding matches your description. I've definitely noticed a gradient in S. Korean opinions of the Japanese between older vs. younger generations. Additionally, when I visited the Korean National Cultural and Historical Museum in Seoul, I was struck by the sparseness of the exhibits. I gathered that there are few S. Korean artifacts remaining after the Japanese attempts to purge their culture during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Anecdotally, it seems the S. Koreans are presently moving towards elevating the depth of their art and culture. New art galleries are popping up all over in Seoul it seems. An ex-pat buddy of mine, a professional photographer married to a Korean gal, confirmed my observations while I visited last year. He struggled for years to find patrons in the U.S. Just before our visit, he was taken under the wing of a master photographer in Korea. He now has no trouble selling his work.

Another observation; unemployment is very low in S. Korea. It seems everybody has a job. They must be doing something right.
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07-25-2012 02:04 PM #15
Hammer Hands
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Originally Posted by MissingInAction
All I know is that Korean wimenz will love the blonde/ginger round eye long time. DAYAM!. This thread has me thinking of hot asian action.
This tends to be true, yet IMO they like black dudes more because to the Korean gal, black dudes are even more rare/exotic in Asia. More than skin color differences, however, Korean gals tend to like guys that are tall and/or physically imposing. Like most women, they crave a sense of security from their partner in whatever form security may manifest.
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07-25-2012 02:10 PM #16
MissingInAction
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My year in Korea was a blast. I have a lot of respect for the Korean people. I found them to be well worth fighting for if it came to that.
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07-25-2012 04:25 PM #18
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This behavior towards the police is not limited to South Korea but rather Asia as a whole. I've NEVER had a problem with cops in Japan, Thailand, Vietnam or Cambodia. The only country I would really be cautious towards the police in Asia would be Myanmar. You could get into some trouble over there.

Otherwise, under policing is the norm. I've witnessed numerous times where drunks and punks have just brazenly pushed around police in Japan. The cops just take it and politely ask the thugs to stop. It's a strange thing to witness if you're from the United States. American cops would have those guy on the ground and cuffed.

And to be honest, America is over-policed. I've been here since March and have been pulled over three times. I was ticketed once for not using my right turn signal at an empty intersection at night ($180). Seriously? This is one thing I miss about Asia. I'm a night owl. I like to go out at night. You NEVER get any trouble or fear for your safety over there. Here? You'll get pulled over. I see cops here trailing drivers and occasionally pulling them over. For what??? $$$$

This is one thing I hate about that 'Locked Up Abroad' show. You have to be really stupid to get arrested overseas as you pretty much have free rein over there. The cops typically just ignore you unless you commit a serious crime. This only reinforces some people's fear of certain foreign countries.

Side note....strangest encounter I've ever had with a cop was in Siam Reap a few years ago. A cop in full uniform approached asking if I wanted to buy some weed. I'm sure he was serious. They only make $40 a month over there so you gotta make the cash where you can.
Last edited by sweetnsourpoke; 07-25-2012 at 04:31 PM.
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07-25-2012 04:38 PM #19
Taargus
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Originally Posted by Hammer Hands
This tends to be true, yet IMO they like black dudes more because to the Korean gal, black dudes are even more rare/exotic in Asia. More than skin color differences, however, Korean gals tend to like guys that are tall and/or physically imposing. Like most women, they crave a sense of security from their partner in whatever form security may manifest.
Interesting opinion.

I've always felt bad for Africans and African-Americans in Asia. Some pretty serious discrimination over there. I've always been under the impression most Japanese, Koreans and Southeast Asians had some pretty serious derogatory opinions of blacks. I remember shopping for an apartment in Seoul with a friend of mine (he was looking) and visiting a real estate office. He was interested in one particular neighborhood and the agent just blunty recommended..."Don't move there. Many blacks. Too many black. Not good place to live."

I was always surprised with some of the statements my students made in Thailand. In Thailand, the whiter the skin, the better. One reason why girls wear long-sleeve shirts on the beach. They do look down on dark skin Isan women and would ask 'Why do foreign men like dark skin women?' We had a teacher that was a black dude from California and some students would tell me privately they were afraid to take his class because 'he was scary'. Ha. Nicest guy on the staff.

If you're black, the one place you'll want to live is Okinawa. It's like a heaven for brothas. I worked as a bartender over there in 2010 and was amazed at how most young Okinawan women want mixed black/Japanese babies. I'll bet half the Okinawan girls that came into my bar were single mothers with black kids. It's just unbelievable. They're very much into hip-hop culture over there....so if you're black....you'll get laid in spades.
Last edited by sweetnsourpoke; 07-25-2012 at 04:47 PM.
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Jean Chung for The International Herald Tribune
A police officer hauled a drunken man into a station in Seoul. “They consider us pushovers,” a police superintendent said of the inebriated.
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: July 24, 2012
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¶ SEOUL, South Korea — The drunken man banged the door of his cell in the police station with his knee. He ripped the padding off the walls, throwing shreds and spouting curses at the police officers outside the bars, who ignored him as if such rampages were part of their nightly routine.

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Jean Chung for The International Herald Tribune
Young people with hangovers in the Hongdae area of Seoul, where the police have been cracking down on drunken violence.
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Jean Chung for The International Herald Tribune
An officer at the Yeongdeunpo police station tried to contact the family of an inebriated man who was taken into the station in Seoul.
¶ Such scenes, captured on police security videos shown on television, are common in South Korea. They say much about that society’s acceptance of heavy drinking and about the peculiar relationship between the country’s citizens and their police.

¶ Almost every night in almost every police station lockup in Seoul, drunken men — and sometimes women — can be found abusing officers verbally and even physically, as a widely tolerated way of banishing anger. They usually are allowed to sleep it off and go home, their punishment no more than a small fine.

¶ “They consider the police station a place to let off steam,” a police superintendent, Park Dan-won, said. “They consider us pushovers.”

¶ Now the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency has decided that enough is enough.

¶ In May, large banners went up around the city announcing a crackdown on drunken violence. It is intended to prompt the drinking public to behave more responsibly, to reassert police authority in a country that remembers, resentfully, when the police served as henchmen for Japanese colonial masters and military dictators, and to challenge South Korea’s general tolerance of misbehavior by the intoxicated.

¶ In Seoul last year, nearly 77 percent of those charged with obstruction of justice — like abusing public servants — were drunk at the time. But in only 15 percent of such cases did the police seek to hold the offender for any length of time, and they succeeded in only half of those cases because of judges’ and prosecutors’ traditional leniency toward people brought before them on drunken offenses.

¶ “We hesitate to use force against unruly drunken citizens because then we’re likely to face charges of police brutality,” said Cho Tai-il, senior police inspector in the Guro district of Seoul.

¶ Since the police campaign began, the police have arrested nearly 230 serial offenders — individuals who had been investigated an average of 26 times, but arrested only occasionally, over various offenses they committed while drunk, including hampering the police in the course of their duties.

¶ Many South Koreans, who work some of the longest hours in the world, believe that one of the quickest ways of building friendship and office camaraderie is to get drunk together. “He who drinks more works better” is a common saying here, and the working person’s drink of choice is often “the bomb,” a shot glass of soju, the local grain liquor, added to a glass of beer. The concoction is then downed in unison by all around the table to shouts of “One shot!” or “Bottoms up!”

¶ According to the World Health Organization, South Koreans rank No. 13 in alcohol consumption over all but No. 1 in hard liquor consumption. A Korean Alcohol Research Foundation survey in 2010 found that about 44 percent of college students said they had experienced blackouts from excessive drinking.

¶ “A problem with the way South Koreans drink is that they drink fast to get drunk fast,” a foundation official, Chang Ki-hwun, said. “In a society with a strong collective mentality, people are not trained to say no to coercive drinking.”

¶ It is also cheap to get drunk in South Korea. A 360-milliliter bottle of soju, about 12 ounces, costs about 1,200 won, about $1, at ubiquitous all-night stores. Young celebrities like the Olympic figure-skating champion Yuna Kim appear in liquor advertisements. On television, some celebrities brag about how much they can drink.

¶ On weekend nights, it is easy to find besotted men, some in suits and ties, vomiting or sprawled in the subways or on the street. (Some take off their shoes and glasses and sleep using their briefcase or a concrete curb for a pillow.) They are such a fixture of Seoul’s night life that there is even a blog about it: Black Out Korea.

¶ Choi Jeong-wook, an assistant police inspector in the Yeongdeungpo district of Seoul, said 80 percent of the work at his station involved dealing with drunks, like the elderly man who was brought in on a recent Friday night for punching another man in a fight over a woman.

¶ At one point, the man grabbed an officer by the collar and pushed him against a wall. He was released, and police officers expect he will get a small fine. People at the station said he boasted of having already been fined a total of four million won, an estimated $3,500, for drunk and disorderly conduct offenses.

¶ During Japan’s colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, Koreans resented the police for working with the Japanese authorities. After Korea’s liberation, many officers ran the national police force, which formed the front line in suppressing pro-democracy demonstrations.

¶ After the country’s democratization in the late 1980s, the relationship between citizens and the police was upended. Fear of officers was replaced with an attitude of “citizens are your boss.”

¶ In the busy Sinchon district on a recent night, a jaywalking man blocked a police car, kicked the bumper and pulled the antenna, challenging the “jjapsae” — derogatory Korean slang for cops — to a fistfight while amused pedestrians watched. The officer urged him to go home.

¶ “We’re not asking people to fear us,” Inspector Choi said. “We’re just asking them not to abuse us.”

¶ Some South Koreans, though, accuse the police of continuing to act as a tool of the politically powerful. Kwon Kyung-woo, an online columnist and a critic of the police crackdown on drunks, many of them jobless or homeless, said it reminded him of the old military dictatorships, when disorderly citizens and petty criminals were taken to brutal re-education camps in the name of “social purification.” He argued that the police had found an “easy target” in drunken miscreants to divert people’s attention from economic troubles and corruption scandals implicating associates of President Lee Myung-bak.

¶ Not everyone agrees. When officers took a drunken man from the 7-Eleven outlet, the store’s manager, Yang Seung-guk, praised the police for finally doing their job. “He demanded free liquor,” Mr. Yang said. “When I said no, he lay down on the floor, talked to the A.T.M., kicked the trash can and drove the customers away. Good riddance.”

¶This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

¶Correction: July 28, 2012

¶An article on Wednesday about a crackdown on drunken violence and abuse of police officers in Seoul, South Korea, misspelled the name of the district where a jaywalking man recently blocked a police car, kicked the bumper and pulled the antennae, then used derogatory Korean slang for officers in challenging them to a fistfight. It is the Sinchon district, not Sinshon.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 25, 2012, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Korean Police Tire of Abuse By Drinkers.